Joe Williams, in his STLtoday review of "Kingdom of Heaven", has decided that the movie isn't bad, because "[Director Ridley]Scott seems to be saying that the reason he invested so much effort into dramatizing them is because they're not over, and it's time for a mutually respectful truce."
The holy wars are NOT over? Dang, and I thought the whole thing in Iraq was about oil! After all, haven't our prices stayed way down as a result of all that crude we've stolen?
And, gee, I expect all those charming and sincerely good-hearted members of Hamas in Palestine will be swayed by Scott's sincerity. And, of COURSE we can trust them to honor a truce. After all, they've always treated infidels with respect before, haven't they?
When they beat their swords into plowshares, I might believe the "mutually respectful truce" is possible.
Also in his review, Williams lauds the film's "giving props to the resourceful and rightly aggrieved Arabs"
How rightly aggrieved were they? It seems to me that the ARABS were the problem in the first place, according to some of the best research of the day:
In the 7th cent., Jerusalem was taken by the caliph Umar. Pilgrimages (see pilgrim) were not cut off at first, but early in the 11th cent. the Fatimid caliph Hakim began to persecute the Christians and despoiled the Holy Sepulcher. Persecution abated after his death (1021), but relations remained strained and became more so when Jerusalem passed (1071) from the comparatively tolerant Egyptians to the Seljuk Turks, who in the same year defeated the Byzantine emperor Romanus IV at Manzikert."
I guess Williams gets his history from Hollywood. Maybe I should send him a book or two on the topic.
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